It’s been several years that Aurélien Jeanney (alias Flying Pou7), graphic designer and video director in our green lands, has never been far away from the turmoil caused by each new Pierre Feuille Ciseaux.
Last October, while giving a hand at the Usine where he has become familiar with destroying All Over’s silkscreen printing studio equipment with a genuine enthusiasm, he had brought his video recorder. Three months later, the result is a short video composed of a few images gleaned here and there while racing against the clock.
Obviously, this is not an exhaustive video catalog of what Pierre Feuille Ciseaux#3 has been, but rather a souvenir made of moving images. The association ChiFouMi thanks him for that (and actually invites you to poke your nose into the whole of his dense work).

The music, moving as well, was made by Zak Sally, one of the American cartoonists invited during the third residency.
Once more, we invite you to read his books (he’s La Mano’s boss, a publishing organization ‘invisible since 1992’) and to listen to his music (his solo work is available from Sub Pop).

It’s been one week that the residency is over and surely, we are not the only one still having our heads stuck in this cloud named Pierre Feuille Ciseaux #3. Not to be exhaustive (which is impossible regarding the amount of events that happened this week) we’ve made a short record of the event and it’s making of.

Although the residency is over, some cartoonists still participate in meetings organized this week in various bookshops in Franche-Comté. Tonight, it will take place at the Sandales d’Empédocle in Besançon.
You can come and talk to Sarah Glidden, Zak Sally and Anders Nilsen at 10.45 pm.
Just before, at 6 pm, the opening of “The Lost & Found”, Anders Nilsen‘s retrospective exhibition at Seize OGS.
Don’t hesitate to come and see, especially if you didn’t manage to come at the Saline this weekend. The exhibition is running till November 17.

This project initiated by Zak Sally is an island map where the cartoonists have pinned up bits and pieces of stories in interaction with reliefs and drawings already hung up. There is no reading direction, which offers numerous approaches of a same story.

Take a group of 3 cartoonists, and a sheet of paper with 6 blank frames. Each of them has 5 minutes to draw a first frame using the first person ‘I’. Then give the sheet to one of his pairs next to him and take the sheet given by the third one to draw the second frame using the second person ‘you’ and so forth till the 6th frame.

Today there was an additional difficulty (HA HA HAA!): the language barrier. Each group included at least one non-French speaking cartoonist. This morning, some strips were thus written in two or even three languages.

While the cartoonists are working on the twelve pages of the book, Mayumi and Raphael from the incredibly awesome Icinori collective are silkscreen printing its cover. Meticulousness and care are catchwords. You can witnesses their experience through the attention they grant to each step of the work’s making.

Raphael Urwiller and Mayumi Otero, founders of the experimental publishing house named Icinori, are here for the whole week to help the cartoonists on a object-book project on their initiative.

This 12 pages book will take the shape of an accordion (see above). 60 copies will be made through silkscreen printing (3 colors). Some of the copies of this limited edition will be sold during the weekend.(more…)

A year ago, almost to the day, died Harvey Pekar, who was an eminently important author in what is known today as Comic Art’s history.

At the end of the 1960s, Harvey Pekar meets Robert Crumb, other leading light of underground Comic Art, who is then at the very beginning of his career. Both men have a passion for Jazz Music and collect rare and precious first pressings. They quickly become friends, good enough for Harvey, seduced and convinced by the large range of possibilities offered by Comic Art but “incapable of drawing the least straight line” (according to himself), to propose Crumb a collaboration. It was, all casually, one of the very first time that comic art was taken away from its usual sphere of activity (fantasy, adventure, science-fiction, and other genres well used in US comics’ industries).
In 1976, Harvey Pekar starts to publish “American Splendor”, which was to become one of the most important comics series, if you take a look at how it evolved ever since. Harvey Pekar narrates his own life, in an autobiographical way that has been exploited too much afterwards (for instance, during the last 15 years, the Belgian and French have produced plethora of authors dealing with their everyday life…). His frankness, his honesty, and a good critical mind (towards society and himself), would sooner make his work a success.

Besides Crumb, many other illustrators accepted to collaborate with the author from Cleveland, who shall write until the narration of his fight against cancer in 1995 (“Our cancer year”, made with his wife Joyce Brabner). Pekar appears to be definitely human, which may be the reason of his work’s success. Dealing with his dismal everyday life and with the difficulty in carving out a place for himself in a society that considers him a freak who will always be a loser, Pekar just talks about many people’s reality.

And what does Harvey Pekar have to do with Pierre Feuille Ciseaux, besides the fact that he’s one of the greatest authors of this Comic Art we stand up for ? Actually, during the weekend of opening to the public (Saturday the 8th and Sunday the 9th of 2011), you might attend the screening of the movie “American Splendor”, very ambitious adaptation combining documentary and fiction, images from real life and actors…

Recounting Pekar’s path including its numerous steps, the movie is made of episodes and displays many stratagems to inscrease the standing of Pekar’s thought about Comic Art’s relevance. Pekar himself (as well as his wife, his colleagues, etc) and professional actors play one or the other’s part: it gives us the opportunity to see Pekar (the real one) have a conversation with Pekar (the cartoon) or Pekar (the fake one, played by Paul Giamatti, very good at putting on the clothes of this real (or not) misanthropist that Pekar was. Such a nice film, actually! And we’re very happy to present it to you ( huge thanks to both Jean-Michel Cretin, cinema programme planner at the Théâtre de L’Espace, and Diaphana Films’team).

Of course, you will find the essential French versions of “American Splendor” at La Bouquinerie. They’ve been published by Çà Et Là, and the third volume should be available in every good bookshop in the middle of September. Let’s leap at the opportunity to greet on this editor’s work, which we really appreciate.

And before you decide to (re-)throw yourself into one of Harvey’s books, we encourage you to have a squint at the great tribute that Dean Haspiel (illustrator of “The Quitter“, written by Pekar), Set Kushner, and a few others pay to him by clicking on the following picture :